1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method and a computer program for producing a photo movie as moving image data generated based on a still image. More specifically, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method and a computer program for producing a photo movie during a finalize process or a content editing process.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the recording capacity of disk-type recording media increases, video cameras storing moving images or still images on a disk instead of the known recording tape are commercially available. Since the disk-type recording medium is used in a random-access fashion, any desired scene can be efficiently found from recorded data. Since the disk-type recording medium operates in a non-contact fashion, data accessing to the disk is performed in a manner free from physical wear. For example, digital versatile disk (DVD) video cameras are in widespread use because of the user friendliness thereof such as high image quality and ease of editing.
Many of video cameras record not only moving images but also still images. A moving image and a still image, recorded on a video camera, are recorded on an information recording medium of the video camera as separate files. The information recording media include a digital versatile disk (DVD) and a flash memory.
The moving images and still images, recorded on the information recording medium, can be reproduced on a reproducing apparatus such as a personal computer. The still images may be reproduced in a slide show fashion in which a plurality of still images successively switched or may be reproduced as a moving image by producing a moving image file (for example, a MPEG file) based on the plurality of still images, namely, a photo movie. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publications Nos. 10-200843 and 2005-303908 disclose the photo movie. To reproduce the still images on an reproducing apparatus that runs only a moving image reproducing program, the still image needs to be in a photo movie based format.
When the still image is recorded on the information recording medium in a recording apparatus such as a video camera, a photo movie production process is performed at a given stage based on the still image recorded on the information recording medium. The photo movie production process is performed in a finalize process that sets the information recording medium to an additional storage disabled state.
When still image data is converted into a moving image format, an attribute information storage file corresponding to the moving image format is set. Depending on the format, there are limitations on the number and size of permitted attribute information storage files. If the upper limitation is reached before the finalize process, the attribute information storage file corresponding to the photo movie cannot be produced.
After the finalize process is performed on the video camera that has recorded data, a user may desire to cancel the finalize process to reproduce the data. In view of the recording of a new image, a photo movie produced at the finalize process is preferably deleted, and a photo movie is preferably produced with the additionally stored new image accounted for. To perform this process, the deletion process needs to be performed after determining whether the file is a photo movie. It is difficult for known apparatuses to efficiently identify the file.